PGA Honors Jonathan Mesulam with the 2026 Defender of Democracy Award

Mexico City, Mexico 26 March, 2026

Jonathan Mesulam is the Founder and Coordinator of the West Coast Development Foundation, a local Papua New Guinea NGO working with communities addressing issues relating to Climate Change and to promote conservation of their local environments.

Jonathan works in his home province of New Ireland, advocating on the Deep-Sea Mining Campaign, Illegal Logging and Climate Change. He has also been the spokesperson of the Alliance of Solwara Warriors (an alliance of churches, environmental NGOs, and local coastal communities around the Bismarck Sea, an anti-mining alliance of local communities in areas affected by deep-sea mines in PNG and across the Pacific. It has organised the resistance  against seabed mining since 2009, when the controversial deep-sea mining project Solwara 1 was proposed to mine mineral-rich hydrothermal vents on the floor of the Bismarck Sea. The alliance also launched a legal case against the project in PNG's courts. He and other activists have received threats.

Through the Alliance of Solwara Warriors they have built a solidarity network, whose members fight hard to defend their livelihood. (frontline defenders).  He isa teacher by profession who began opposing deep-sea mining after seeing the community being fooled by companies operating in PNG and abroad.

About the Defender of Democracy Award

Parliamentarians for Global Action’s Defender of Democracy Awards (DDA) is presented to individuals who, through their own commitment and active engagement, have made significant progress in strengthening democracy, human rights, equality, and justice.  

Past recipients of the DDA include: Judge Navanethem Pillay (South Africa), former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Mary Robinson (Ireland), former President of Ireland and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi, former Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan; Kailash Satyarthi (India), Nobel Peace Prize winner; Lamiya Aji Bashar (Iraq), a voice for Yazidi victims of genocide and mass atrocities; the democratic process of Cape Verde; Katana Gégé Bukuru (Democratic Republic of Congo), a women’s rights and peace activist; Oleksandra Matvyichuk, Chairwoman of the Center for Civil Liberties (Ukraine) and Nobel Peace Prize winner; Vladimir Kara-Murza (Russia) opposition leader, journalist, filmmaker, and human rights and democracy activist; and Dr. Luis Fondebrider (Argentina), forensic anthropologist and founder of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF).

About PGA

Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA)is the largest non-governmental cross-party network of individual members of parliament across the globe, with over 1,000 members from 150 countries. We mobilize legislators as champions of human rights and the rule of law, democracy, human security, inclusion, gender equality, and justice, including climate justice and the environment. We are the go-to parliamentary network for human rights, serving as a trusted partner, key convenor, and mobilizer at the national, regional, and international levels.